The Ramsey Show - App - Pay Off the House and Get Rich With Your Old House Payment! (Hour 3)

Episode Date: February 21, 2023

Dave Ramsey & Jade Warshaw answer your questions and discuss: "I have $400k in cash... should I pay off my house?" Setting up life insurance to go to your children, from the blog: What Is Life Ins...urance? "Should I drop out of college to take a job?" Avoiding a reverse mortgage, from the blog: What Is a Reverse Mortgage? "We bought a house with a solar lease" Have a question for the show? Call 888-825-5225 Weekdays from 2-5pm ET Want a plan for your money? Take our FREE 3 minute assessment: https://bit.ly/3nInETX Listen to all The Ramsey Network podcasts: https://bit.ly/3GxiXm6 Learn more about your ad choices. https://www.megaphone.fm/adchoices Ramsey Solutions Privacy Policy

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Starting point is 00:00:00 МУЗЫКАЛЬНАЯ ЗАСТАВКА Live from the headquarters of Ramsey Solutions, broadcasting from the pods moving and storage studios, it's the Ramsey Show, where we help people build wealth, do work they love, and create actual amazing relationships. Jade Walshaw Ramsey Personality is my co-host today. Open phones at 888-825-5225. Greg's in Spokane. Hi, Greg.
Starting point is 00:00:54 How are you? I'm doing well, Dave. How are you? Better than I deserve. What's up? Excellent. Well, I've been wanting to give you a call for a while because I think, I don't know, I asked my accountant, she had one way of answering it, but I'm wondering if I should
Starting point is 00:01:12 pay off my house and it's just under $160,000. So do you have any other debt? I have no other debt. And do you have an emergency fund saved up, three to six months of expenses? I have about $450,000. Ooh, saved up? That's saved up. And you have a $160,000 mortgage? Correct. Okay. How did you save up all this? Can you tell me more about this $450,000 you have saved? I'm just interested. Yeah, well, right. Yeah, well, okay.
Starting point is 00:01:52 So I guess I can't necessarily say that I have all of that because part of it is just, you know, what's coming through the business and that sort of thing. About a year and a half ago, I was able to pay off all of my other debt, which was about $100,000, and then get a 401K started for me and my employees. And so that is just what's left. So do you have $450,000 in cash or not well i have i have 450,000 in the bank okay and it's your money yes okay it's your money no caveat on that i mean if you own the business and some of it's in the business account it's still your money right right i'm not sure we want to take it all out but we're not only talking about $160,000 out of $450,000.
Starting point is 00:02:47 Right. Why would you not pay off your mortgage? Well, so when I asked my accountant that just recently, she was like, well, you'd probably make more if you put it into some kind of high-yield something that you're going to make more interest than you would by saving, because my interest rate is 2.5 percent on this is really bad advice um the way we would teach it is the way we would teach it is through the baby steps and you've done them you've got you've
Starting point is 00:03:18 done baby step one two and three i wanted to check and make sure you're doing the 15 percent into retirement it sounds like you are and then from there if you have sure you're doing the 15% into retirement. It sounds like you are. And then from there, if you have kids, you're saving for your kid's college, you're putting away in a 529 or an ESA. And so, yeah, now you're to baby step six. You've got the money. Assuming that this is, you know, bottom line money, everybody's payroll is paid. This is just your retained earnings or whatever. You've got this money here. Yeah. Pay off your debt, you know, pay off the whatever you owe on the mortgage. And then if you have money left over above and beyond that, that you want to continue to invest or pay cash for real estate, then yeah, the world is your oyster. Now you take your old house payment and use it to get rich with.
Starting point is 00:03:56 Yeah. But not the other way around. If you were to say, you know, pay off the house, my next question was going to be, what is the best thing to do with, you know, that mortgage payment that I've been? Yeah, I would get in touch with your broker if you don't have one. You jump online at Ramsey Solutions and find a SmartVestor Pro, we call them. They follow the stuff that we teach, and they're mutual fund brokers. They'll help you get up a mutual fund account. And I would set up, how much is your house payment?
Starting point is 00:04:27 $1,700. Yeah, I just set up $2,000 a month automatic draft out of your checking account. I did that years ago when I paid off my house. And here's what's weird. I just never thought about it again. $2,000 a month I used to pay a house payment, now I pay myself. And, you know, I looked up and it was a million dollars. It went, I mean, it was just like, it felt like 20 seconds, but it wasn't.
Starting point is 00:04:48 It was longer than that. But how fast $2,000 a month becomes serious money will blow your mind. I mean, a decade, it's going to be, I don't know exactly what the number is, but it's going to be there so fast that that's where you want to go. So two thoughts for you to chew on that indicate that your accountant is wrong okay number one uh thought we did the largest study of millionaires that's ever been done in north america airtight research the typical way that a person achieves a net worth of one to five million dollars the fastest is a paid off house and steadily investing in their
Starting point is 00:05:27 retirement accounts okay it is not borrowing as much as they can on their house and investing it in the stock market very few millionaires like less than five percent claim that they leveraged their house their personal residence to build wealth as a matter of fact if we asked them if they did that they looked at us like we were nuts okay now here's how you also would know that that's true because you are using good common sense and you're thinking you're us, but you kind of already know what you're going to do. If your home was paid for and you had $300,000 in your bank account, would you go take out a mortgage in order to have $450,000 in your bank account? No.
Starting point is 00:06:20 Same difference. Yeah. Same exact thing, isn't it? Yeah. Same exact thing, isn't it? So I would pay off your mortgage today because it's the fastest right way towards wealth. I would set up a mutual fund draft for $2,000 out of your checking account, and just for fun, just to see what that house payment becomes. How fast that one account is a million dollars will blow your mind. Then, if you hate being debt free you
Starting point is 00:06:45 can go get your mortgage later if it's just well and she said well if you want that warm fuzzy feeling and i looked at her and i was like yeah i kind of do yeah yeah well here's what's interesting that people don't understand and but i've been doing this for so stinking long, including experienced it myself. You apparently run your own business, right? Correct. Here's what's very weird. You will make decisions, not big ones, but slightly different when you're 100% debt-free than you make today with a pile of cash
Starting point is 00:07:20 in your business. And it will cause a because you're going to be a slightly more bold you're going to be slightly more confident a little bit more swagger in your step because you don't you're not looking over your shoulder for the freaking bank to take you down you are in control of everything and you will make better business decisions your business acumen will increase and i've seen it happen thousands of times in Entree Leadership clients, and I've seen it happen in myself. You know, I make different decisions.
Starting point is 00:07:53 I am not beholding to the culture, what someone out there thinks, because I don't have any payments. And so, you know, it's like cancel culture stuff right we're going to cancel Dave what do you care gonna be a little difficult I own the freaking place you know how you're gonna cancel me I own Ramsey Networks you're gonna you know call me up and tell me not to put me on how's that gonna work you know so you know it's not going to work it changes and and therefore i get to continue to tell the truth here on the microphone instead of being virtue signaling for somebody else's agenda autonomy this is the ramsey show
Starting point is 00:08:36 jade warshaw ramsey personality is my co-host today she was with me in a jam-packed sold out building wealth live event with rachel cruz and george camel and i in indiapolis last week this week i'll be in sold out austin texas thank you. We appreciate that. I will be there with Ken Coleman, Dr. John Deloney, and Jade Warshaw, right? That's right. You'll be with us again in Austin. Yep. There we go. And you can catch me at the other Building Wealth live events.
Starting point is 00:09:14 The next one will be April 24th, Salt Lake City. Rachel Cruz, George Campbell, Christina Ellis, and May 2nd in Anaheim, California, with me, Dr. John Deloney, Ken Coleman, and Christina Ellis. A few tickets left to Anaheim. A few more left for Salt Lake City. They both will sell out early. All of our events for the past two years, well, the past many years, have sold out. So check it out.
Starting point is 00:09:39 And Smart Conference is back, and we're going to be kicking it off at the brand new ramsey event center here on our campus 2500 cedar it is almost sold out just a couple of tickets left it's april 14th and 15th it'll be a full nashville weekend i've talked to some of my friends in the music biz oh yeah they're gonna be some name people turn out and we're gonna celebrate the grand opening of the ramsey event center with the new smart conference all the Ramsey personalities will be speaking we're going to do a Friday broadcast from the stage we're going to do a Friday night music event we're going to do a Saturday all day teaching you about every area of your life from mental health to marriage to boundaries to money to anything you want to talk about.
Starting point is 00:10:28 We're going to be talking about it, and it's going to be a great weekend. And we just recently announced our money and marriage giveaway, a chance for you and your spouse to realign and celebrate your marriage. That'll be here in Nashville, October 19th through the 21st, with Dr. John Deloney and Rachel Cruz. Wow. And guess where that'll be? In the Ramsey Event Center. So check it out.
Starting point is 00:10:45 Lots of stuff happening here on the campus. We want you to come hang out with us. It's also free to drop by and watch the show anytime you want to do that. And so we'd love to have you do that. Lots of free coffee and cookies and stuff from our cafe here and the Baker Street Cafe. So check it out. Ramseysolutions.com slash events for tickets to any of those things.
Starting point is 00:11:05 Suggest you check them out and come out and visit us. Looking forward to being with you guys in Austin in just a matter of hours. So thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. That's exciting.
Starting point is 00:11:15 All right. Samantha is next in Sacramento. Hi, Samantha. Welcome to the Ramsey Show. Hi. I'm so excited to talk to you guys. You too. What's up?
Starting point is 00:11:26 So, um, I went ahead and reached out, um, to Xander and got a life insurance policy. Good. And I'm just kind of looking for guidance on how to set up my bill, um, how to allocate that money.
Starting point is 00:11:38 Um, and I was hoping you guys could give me some guidance. Okay. You married? No, I'm single, a single mother of two boys. And my main thing is there's such a huge age gap.
Starting point is 00:11:48 My oldest is 18, going to school and working right now, and then my youngest is five. Okay. How much life insurance did you buy? I got a million-dollar policy. Okay. What do you make? About $90,000. Good for you.
Starting point is 00:12:00 Okay. What do you want the $100,000 a year income to go to? So I have a family mother member who would take on the responsibility of my youngest, but I don't want to leave my oldest kind of like, you know, high and dry. I'd still like to be able to give them some things, you know, when we're not there. And then, you know, at the time that my youngest is older, like where does that balance of that money go to as well? Gotcha. Okay.
Starting point is 00:12:35 Well, the most thorough way, it's a little bit more trouble to set up, but the most thorough way, the way that's going to do the best is a trust. Okay. And so, like, let me give you an example. When our kids were minors, our life insurance first went to sharon or if she died it went to me but the secondary beneficiary went to the children's trust okay now that that's evaporated because our children are not minors anymore okay but um but this is how we had it set up in your case it's just going to be your primary your main beneficiary is going to be the Children's Trust.
Starting point is 00:13:07 Okay, Samantha's Children's Trust. You just give it a name, and you have that set up with your will, and then here could be an example of the terms of the trust. So the money for the life insurance is left to the trust. The trustee that manages the trust has to follow the guidelines of the trust. You can name a family member, a lawyer, or a bank to be the trust has to follow the guidelines of the trust you can name a family member a lawyer or a bank to be the trustee i would recommend the family member or a lawyer okay banks are stupid and so uh but if you did this then you could say okay the 18 year old can have up to $250,000.
Starting point is 00:13:45 I'm making this up, okay? $300,000 to go to college. But only if they're going to college. I'm not going to support his cocaine habit. You follow me? So you can dictate very specifically the trustee can only distribute the money to the 18-year-old to use for higher education. And that encourages them to go get a degree. Okay?
Starting point is 00:14:10 If you wanted to do that, that would be an example. If you want to just give an 18-year-old $300,000, you can. That's got a little bit of danger attached to it. Can we agree on that? Yeah, for sure. Okay. But you could also say by the time he's 25, you could also build it in the trust at 25. If you live until he's 25, seven more years, the trust automatically just gives him 300 grand,
Starting point is 00:14:32 which would be fine at 25. I'm fine with that. But at 18, I want to give him a little bit more guidance, okay? That's just me. You can set it up however you want. You get to make this up, okay? Then let's say you took 700 000 and the trustee's guidance was to get with a smart mr pro and put the money in good mutual funds and the
Starting point is 00:14:50 mutual funds were to make oh say around 10 to 12 a year then you say i'm going to take 70 000 a year and distribute it the trustee is to take 70 000 a year which the 700 should make, right, invested, distributed to the guardian of your child, just for child support, just to take care of them. And if that minor child needs a car when they're 16, they could make a distribution up to $20,000 or whatever. And if that kid has a major medical event, we could take a distribution to cover the major medical. And if that kid wants to go to college when they're 18, we can start taking distributions for that.
Starting point is 00:15:29 Okay. But other than that, they live off the income. Okay. And the youngest already is going to have child support from his dad. Yeah, but that doesn't matter. You're distributing this to take care of your youngest. That's what you're doing. That child support's over and above that.
Starting point is 00:15:43 Or that could influence the amount that you leave to each kid. I don't care. I made that up. I was kind of assuming the little kid needed more money than the old kid who's got a job and is like going to be an adult and stuff. But you do it however you want to do it, right? But once you leave it in the trust, then you just, you can really, you can comb that trust down into the finest of detail.
Starting point is 00:16:07 Mine said four types of growth stock mutual funds, growth, growth and income, aggressive growth, and international, with at least 10-year track records. My trust stated that it had to be invested that way, and if the trustee didn't do that, they were liable. I put it in great detail and and the things that i just outlined is exactly what our kids had it's like major medical you can pull extra car you can pull a little and higher education you can pull a little other than that you live off the income
Starting point is 00:16:36 and uh explained all that to the family member that would have been taking care of them they said great we're going to have plenty of money to raise them and if there's an emergency we got a backdrop and if they live if everything, great, we're going to have plenty of money to raise them. And if there's an emergency, we've got a backdrop. And if everything lives out perfectly, they're going to have really nice money when they get out of college. Now, Dave, if somebody doesn't have a trust, but they have a very clear will, and it's stipulated, what's the difference there? Why is it?
Starting point is 00:17:01 In this case, the will will not manage money over a decade. It'll only manage the distribution of the will when someone dies, or the assets when someone dies. Up to a decade. So a will doesn't, I mean, over any, you don't, a will is a short-term thing for at death, here's what happens. A trust is at over life, here's what happens. Over a longer period of time, here's what happens.
Starting point is 00:17:23 A will won't distribute money to someone a decade from now. I think that's really important to note, not just for Samantha, but for anybody listening, why the will is great to have, but won't cut it over the long haul. Yeah, and this trust was never formed. It was built out, but it was only to be formed upon both of our deaths in our case. So you never needed it. So in Samantha's case, she lives until the child, the minor child grows up and the 18-year-old grows up.
Starting point is 00:17:49 She may end up just canceling this life insurance policy because they're both self-sufficient. They don't need her at some point, financially speaking. And that's probably what's going to happen. But your life insurance is for your worst case scenario. And so none of that occurred. All those wills are burned. And all those life insurance policies for your worst-case scenario. And so none of that occurred. All those wills are burned. And all those life insurance policies are gone for us.
Starting point is 00:18:10 This is The Ramsey Show. Jade Walsh, our Ramsey personality, is my co-host today. Thank you for joining us, America. Hey, if you are enjoying this show and we're a help to you, you can pay us back. Because it's free, by the way. So thank you for doing that. But you can help us, in other words. We would appreciate the help.
Starting point is 00:18:38 There's a couple things you can do. One is if you are a YouTube or a podcast follower, you can subscribe. Hit the follow button, the subscribe button. The more people that subscribe, the more it raises it to the top in things that they recommend, and then people find us more and more and more and more and more. Thank you for that. We appreciate that.
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Starting point is 00:19:27 You are listening on a podcast. You can share that with a shareable link. Uh, same thing with YouTube. You can share that with a shareable link, share the show with someone, review the show and, uh, subscribe and follow to the show. How you do that and talk radio. It's, it's an old thing. It's called the memory button on your radio and you memorize the station it's some of you don't even know how to do that
Starting point is 00:19:50 anymore but but if you're if you're a radio person then that you can just reserve the station as a memory number one on your radio and then you can know to tune in this time when you're hearing us um by pushing that number one button right there on your radio so that's a throwback dude that is a throwback it's really let me tell you when we first started in radio that scan button you get a scan and it would jump from station to station station until you heard something you half liked um that was our best promotional tool for a while random people stopping with the scan button wow Wow. Don't get that much anymore. All right, let's go to Hunter in Tucson.
Starting point is 00:20:27 Hi, Hunter. Welcome to the Ramsey Show. Hey, Dave. How are you doing? Better than I deserve. How can we help? So I'm currently 20 years old. I'm going to school for cybersecurity, no debt, cars paid off and everything. And my uncle works at a tech company company and they have an opening for an IT
Starting point is 00:20:45 security job. Now, I'm not sure if I were to get hired, should I withdraw from school and work full time there? Or if I were hired, if they could work around my school, finish my degree. I'm currently a freshman. Have you found out if they would be willing to work around your degree? Well, that's the thing. I'm not quite sure yet. If I were to get hired and I asked and they said yes, I was wondering if I should do it. Does your uncle own the company?
Starting point is 00:21:13 No, he works. He's a contractor. Oh, he works as a contractor. Okay. Yes. Okay. If they will pay for your school and let you do school, I would it but no you're 20 years old go get a degree in cyber security that's going to be a gold mine it's already a gold mine big time need uh six jobs
Starting point is 00:21:38 for every person applying out there the pay is going up every second while i was talking your income went up and um potentially but you you're you're not there you're not valuable yet you don't know squat yet um you you know a little bit of squat but you don't know full squat yet so go ahead and work on i don't know if you need a four-year degree but you need the certifications and i'd love for you to have some experience so ideal world is they pay for your education they let you get it and you work there and get paid too boy that's i'd just go do that for sure but quit school cold with one year or a half a year under your belt and go be a security analyst uh i'm hiring security analyst i'm not hiring you i don't believe you yet you
Starting point is 00:22:27 follow me yes sir i don't mean that insulting well he hasn't had any experience he hasn't had any schooling yet i mean and so i'm not i'm not gonna put the security of ramsey solutions network in your hands right so you know you need to you need to earn the chops to be able to do that and education will do that or experience will do that or in the tech world a cert program a certifications program will do that i don't care but um i need to know that you know because i'm as an owner all i know is i can't spell it okay that's all i'm sure of but i know people try to crash it every day. Oh, yeah. And I know we got quite a little team of anti-hackers around here, security people who ward off the Russian robots every day. Oh, my God, they're real. And yeah, it's the stuff that
Starting point is 00:23:20 happened. But yeah, yeah. So, dude, you're in an excellent field very brilliant choice of career stay with the career and do what it takes to get the chops whether it's a long four-year degree a certification program or experience or some combination of those three things four-year degrees in information systems are not as valuable these days as certifications and experience because by the time you finish the four-year degree all the programming has changed it moves at the speed of light it changes every second every time i buy a computer when we get it out of the box it's already obsolete it's just like oh that one's dead yeah they just hit they hit the red button and it no longer works i had had an opening for the Apple.
Starting point is 00:24:05 Well, it's now useless. That's what it amounts to, yeah. So as soon as you do, then there's something else that's better 30 seconds later, and AI is going to help us accelerate every bit of that, right? Oh, my goodness. So here we go. Game on. Karen is in San Jose.
Starting point is 00:24:18 Hi, Karen. Welcome to the Ramsey Show. Hi. How are you? Better than we deserve. What's up? Okay. My husband and I are thinking about taking out a reverse mortgage on our home.
Starting point is 00:24:31 Please don't. Please don't. Okay. Okay. You want to know why? Yes. Very high fees. Ridiculous interest rates.
Starting point is 00:24:43 Yes. ridiculous interest rates yes it's uh 14 000 to get it and 10.2 or 3 interest rates just almost like i knew what i was doing who figured you know that's there you go right there none of that and i know it's debt we know it's dead we don't have any debt it is and your home is paid for no uh we just had to have it uh appraised for the reverse mortgage and it came in at $2,000,000.3. Is it paid for? No, we owe $3,085,000. Oh, wow. What's making you, what made you get to the point to where you were even considering this? Because we didn't want to touch our retirement that's about $1,000,000.2. Why why because every time we take something out we have to pay more taxes on it and um the taxes are getting to be a drained it's about a thousand
Starting point is 00:25:30 dollars a month we pay quarterly taxes yeah so we thought we'd have what's in the house are you ready 81 and 84 don't let that scare you we're very very active i'm not i'm not i'm not scared of you at all karen okay here's the thing here's the thing don't let the tail wag the dog and when you make financial decisions based only on taxes and the rest of the deal sucks that that's the tail wagging the dog uh-huh i hate taxes as as you do, but not bad enough to do something stupid. And 10% and $14,000 is in the stupid zone. You've almost got your house paid for, and you've got a lot of peace around that. You don't have to worry about where you're going to live.
Starting point is 00:26:18 You have a wonderful property in San Jose, freaking California. That's a wonderful real estate market. You're just, I mean, you made so much money on this house while you've owned it please just enjoy the ride okay and pay a little pay a little taxes and enjoy the ride okay so it's okay to take a little bit every now and then for uh like suppose the building needed to be painted it was fifteen thousand dollars you take it out of your retirement, then you'd have to pay taxes on it. If you do that and you add it all up,
Starting point is 00:26:51 how old do you have to live before you run out of money? What's your million two invested in? The portfolio? Yeah. Stocks? Okay, so what's it making? Is it making 10% or 12%? No, we lost about 20 not this year not this year overall what's it making yeah it was making about seven to eight percent okay
Starting point is 00:27:14 so let's pretend let's pretend you had an eighty thousand dollar your income can you do can you pay your taxes and paint your house yes because you do you do have an $80,000. You're 8% of $100,000. And by the way, you'd have to live to $180,000 to outwork this formula. So you're okay. Don't take out a reverse mortgage. They're bad. Really bad.
Starting point is 00:27:38 This is The Ramsey Show. our scripture of the day matthew 20 26 and 28. But among you it will be different. Whoever wants to be a leader among you must be your servant. And whoever wants to be first among you must become your slave. For even the Son of Man came not to be served, but to serve others and to give his life as a ransom for many. Arthur Ashe said, true heroism is remarkably sober, very undramatic. It is not the urge to surpass all others at whatever the cost, but the urge to serve others at whatever the cost. There it is.
Starting point is 00:28:38 Michelle is with us in Tucson. Hi, Michelle. Welcome to the Ramsey Show. Hi. I am so excited. I cannot believe I'm talking to the Dave Ramsey. Imagine how I feel. Underwhelmed, but how can we help? So we kind of got ourselves in a pickle. That's probably all your callers, right? So we did the financial piece years ago, and then I'm afraid to say we kind of fell off board. We had a couple moves, a baby. And so anyway, please don't shame me, but we bought our house a couple years ago and bought a solar lease.
Starting point is 00:29:29 Well, it came with the house. I tried to call recently because we're starting up financial peace again because we need to kind of, you know, get back in the game. And we found out, I tried to see if we could buy out the lease and unfortunately there is no buyout option and so i don't know what to do now as far as like going through the process again and do you have any documentation on this i do okay have you attempted to read it? Yes. Is it gobbledygook? No, they pointed it out on the line item E that we cannot buy out our lease.
Starting point is 00:30:15 And how long is the lease? We have another 15 years on it, and we bought the house two or three years ago, so it was already two years into the lease and they transferred it over to us so you're paying for solar panels for 15 years unless we sell the house then either we have an option to transfer over the lease to the next owners, or we can pay off the lease at that point. You can pay off the lease now if you paid all the payments for 15 years, but I don't recommend that.
Starting point is 00:30:55 I asked them that. They said that we cannot. Oh, absolutely you can. They can't stop you from doing that, but they don't have to give you a discount. That's what the line item means. So that's not legal. What's the full amount? I want to say, I don't have the papers in front of me, but I just looked at them last week.
Starting point is 00:31:18 I want to say it's about $20,000 left around there. Through the whole 15 years? Yeah. So it's over $1,000 left around there. Through the whole 15 years? Yeah. So it's over $1,000 a year. Yeah. For those of you out there considering solar panels, let this be a lesson to you. Either pay cash for them or don't buy them. Okay.
Starting point is 00:31:40 I'm big on solar because the current technology on the new solar panels is excellent, especially in a place like Arizona. They actually work. They have a break-even period of about three to five years, and if you pay cash for them, it could work out. You've got to really run the math and make sure in your area it will work. But in your case, you just got screwed by the crooks in the solar industry. Because this is crooked. I mean, it's not technically crooked. It's not fraud, but it's immoral to stick somebody in something
Starting point is 00:32:15 with absolutely no escape methodology. So I don't know what to tell you. What's the house worth? Um, we bought it right before the, um, increase. Um, I believe when we did it, it was about, I want to say five. Okay. $500,000 house and a $20,000 problem. What's your household income?
Starting point is 00:32:45 Um, about a,000 a year. So you can just put this stupid in the budget if you want to, just a line item. Do you pay it monthly or annually? Monthly. Yeah, just put it in the line item, stupid. Just put stupid in your every dollar and just pay it every month. That's one thing you can do, and then just not worry about it again.
Starting point is 00:33:03 Just call it a day. Because here's the thing. If you give them $ them twenty thousand dollars now we know that 15 years from now you're probably not in this house so that was dumb to pay it off that way with no discount okay because had you invested the same amount of money gradually over a period of time it's a lot more than twenty thousand dollars so i would rather you just take your money and live about your life and just write this down other than that if you want to spend a few hundred dollars and go talk to an attorney and have them write the solar company a letter and say if you don't discount this and let these people out for a reasonable rate uh we're going to make some kind of problem for you i don't know threaten them because it's just
Starting point is 00:33:46 wrong it's ethically wrong what they've trapped you into uh but it also was stupid so you could put it in the line item as stupid in the budget i will accept that i'm not shaming you i'm not shaming you because i've done stupid a lot bigger than a thousand dollars a year i promise you i've done a lot bigger stupid than that so this is fairly minor in the scope of your life. But what's frustrating, on your behalf, I'm aggravated because you're stuck. I don't know a way to get you out. Yeah, I'm upset too, and I will make sure. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:34:20 Why don't you call the Consumer Affairs Division at the state of Arizona and ask them if they have any suggestions. Okay. And they may have dealt with unscrupulous solar companies before, and they may have a loophole that has been put in that the company wasn't willing to tell you. I don't know. I really don't know of a way. But I'm just fishing
Starting point is 00:34:45 around so you know you can have an attorney try to smack them upside the head you could talk to the consumer affairs division see if they know a loophole in your state maybe they passed something like for instance uh another ripoff that arizona has done a good job with is timeshares timeshares are legalized fraud okay and and arizona has got some good legislation on the books to smack the timeshare industry around like it needs to be it needs to be smacked around because they're screwing people left and right usually old people and it's who they get most often and so yeah that but arizona's done a good job with that so maybe they did a good job with unscrupulous solar. But let me just highlight one more time.
Starting point is 00:35:26 I am not anti-solar. Right, right, right. I'm not anti-replacing the windows in your house, but taking payments to replace the windows in your house in order to save that much on your electric bill because you have a more efficient window is an absolute scam. Don't do that. And solar panels is not something that you could resell,
Starting point is 00:35:47 like purchase, resell, or move to another residence. Not old ones, because it's like a computer. Stinkin' technology has gotten better every year on it. And so old solar panels are about as much junk as anything you can think of. Wow. They're totally useless. I don't know how old these were. She said two or three years old they're maybe not that old but the current technology on solar is excellent
Starting point is 00:36:09 if you get top of the line stuff yeah uh i mean we've looked at it we endorse them in several markets but not with payments yeah not with a lease i'm not yeah i'm so sorry i'm sorry you got in that michelle i wish i could help you i wish i'm aggravated partly just because i don't know what to do to help you but there you go there you go so good luck with it hon yeah um when you're making decisions what's the the moral of the story from michelle's call or when the stupid things I've done in the past, same thing. When you're making decisions, slow down. Slow, when it comes to wealth, not making mistakes and doing good, solid investments and decisions, slow is fast. The best way to get rich quick is don't get rich quick.
Starting point is 00:37:07 And that's, you know, that's what we talk about around here all the time. And most of the mistakes I've made is when I get in a, I get my little hillbilly butt in a hurry and I run off into a mess. And I've done it too. All of us have done it, but slow down. And then you don't step in a bear trap like that. That puts us out of the Ramsey Show and the books. We'll be back with you before you know it. In the meantime, remember, there's ultimately only one way to financial peace, and that's
Starting point is 00:37:35 to walk daily with the Prince of Peace, Christ Jesus. Hey, what's up, guys? It's Jade. Look, if you like what you heard in this episode and want to know more about getting started on the Ramsey Baby Steps, go to ramseysolutions.com and click the Get Started button.
Starting point is 00:37:54 We'll help you figure out the best next step for you based on your specific situation. That's ramseysolutions.com and click Get Started.

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